I’m going to debunk the assumption that learning the markers/particles in Korean is hard. Specifically when to use neun, eun, reul and eul.

Some of you reading this might wonder why I’m talking about something that’s so easy to get over but a lot of people have a hard time trying to understand WHY there are two different words/markers that mean EXACTLY the same thing but are used in different circumstances. Neun/eun goes after the subject of a sentence and reul/eul goes after the object. Neun and reul are to be used when the last letter you pronounced was a vowel and eun and eul are to be used when the last letter you pronounced was a consonant.

The circumstances you think you have to remember? Forget about them. It’s not a certain situation, it’s not a complicated reason, it’s simply the way you speak. What I mean by this is basically the natural way your mouth moves from pronouncing one letter to another and neun/eun,/reul/eul are there to make this as easy for your mouth as possible. This is not a new thing. This is not unique to Korea. WE HAVE IT IN ENGLISH!

Look at the words ‘a’ and ‘an’. Think about it. They mean the same thing. For example; ‘I stroked a cat’ and ‘I stroked an animal’.

A = the next letter you pronounce will be a consonant

An = the next letter you pronounce will be a vowel

If we said ‘I stroked an cat’ it wouldn’t make sense and our tongue feels a little forced when we try to say it. If we said ‘I stroked a animal’ it sounds a bit awkward doesn’t it? In the same way ‘a’ and ‘an’ are there to make our speech smoother neun/eun and reul/eul are there to make our speech flow.

*If you’re not sure how to pronounce the ‘eo’ sound watch this. To get to the pronunciation of ‘eo’ skip to 6:44, sweetandtasty is brilliant and I highly recommend watching her to understand Korean culture, pronunciation, reading and writing and expanding your vocabulary.*

As you can see once you get a bit faster at saying the sentence is feel comfortable and natural to slip into ‘neun’ right after saying ‘jeo’. Jeo neun, jeo neun ahhhhh so nice. This is why I love Korean language, it’s so flowy. (:

How easily do they just roll of your tongue! So good, it comes naturally I promise. Try saying it wrong. Like’ reum neun’. It sounds uncomfortable. whereas ‘reum eun’ is much more comfy. Just like’ a cat’ and ‘an animal’ is to us English speakers.

So BOOM. Definitely not as hard to get your head round as you might think!Hope that helped you a little if you were struggling! 제 이 름 은 Lily 입 니 다 and I am OFF! (: